


One Game to Love

by notabadday



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Tennis, Tennis AU, with references to other MCU characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-12 06:32:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4468904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fitzsimmons tennis AU. After watching Queens Club, Wimbledon and the Davis Cup back-to-back, coinciding with Comic-Con, this AU began to form in my mind (it's a strange place). Fitz and Simmons are just about the best mixed doubles players that Britain has ever seen, but can they claim the Wimbledon title?</p><p> <i>“I caught the last set of your match against the French at the Olympics last year. You and Fitz were so tight, it was like you were psychically linked.”</i></p><p>  <i>“No,” Jemma replied, all too insistently. “I don’t think so actually.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Courtship

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this isn't as crazy an idea as it might sound.

July weather had arrived in earnest. Every forecast was declaring a heatwave as temperatures broke 30 degrees Celsius, and SW19 was just about the warmest patch of land in the country, the air filled with the smell of suncream and strawberries mixing together. Everyone at Wimbledon was preparing for the women’s final on Centre Court, the entire grounds abuzz with excitement.

 The practice courts furthest from the main action were the best chance of calm and quiet. With very little shade, players were scarce. Added to that, it was the second Saturday of the tournament, so many of them had already gone home. Recovering from 45 sweaty minutes of practice on the furthest court was young British hopeful Jemma Simmons. She was gulping down water, her doubles partner Leo Fitz continuing their practice session as she rested, when a familiar face – the women’s number two seed, no less – approached her.

 “Hey, you’re Simmons, right? I’ve seen you guys play,” Skye said, as she gestured absently to where Fitz was hitting some balls on the court in front of them.

 “Yes. It’s wonderful to meet you, Skye. I’m a big fan. Your backhand is, well… I’m sure you know, sublime! The way you make the racket glide through the air, like it’s in slow motion,” Jemma gushed, looking a little startled as she awkwardly reached out a hand to shake before realizing she was still holding her tennis racket. She tried to smoothly bring her arm back to her side, hoping the gesture had gone unnoticed.

 “I caught the last set of your match against the French at the Olympics last year. You and Fitz were so tight, it was like you were psychically linked.”

 “No,” Jemma replied, all too insistently. “I don’t think so actually.”

 Skye smirked. She decided to change the subject, but only a little, noticing Jemma’s poorly concealed glances at Fitz as he continued a light baseline rally with one of their hitting partners, Mack. “I don’t know how you guys do it. I’ve been going through partners on a season-by-season basis; no one seems to stick! First I had Ward,” she explained, groaning as she said his name. “Now _there’s_ a guy who’ll only ever be happy playing singles. Well, happy might be a stretch… _Successful_ , at least. Hell of a serve but… not such a team player.” She shook her head. “And then Trip got injured. Think I’ll stick to singles from now on.”

 “You just haven’t found the right partner,” Jemma assured her.

 “How’d you find yours?” Skye asked, tipping her head in Fitz’s direction.

 “Back at the academy, they would often pair everyone up to develop team rapport or… something. Fitz and I, well, we were stuck together until we both learned to ‘play nice’,” Jemma explained with air quotes. “I mean, half these kids couldn’t find the service box if their lives depended on it. The coaches would put us together to stop us berating them. But we hated each other!” 

 “Really?” Skye leaned in conspiratorially.

 “ _Hated_ each other,” she repeated with emphasis. “I mean Fitz wouldn’t speak to me to begin with!”

 “You weren’t friends? _Or_ …”

 “No! We were enemies. Bitter rivals. The two youngest in the group. Though he is 23 days older than me, for the record. We were so competitive. We were constantly trying to one-up each other.”

 “And they kept you paired up?”

 “Well, we’d at least stopped making the other players cry…” she explained, a little guiltily, before justifying herself: “It’s a very competitive sport, Skye.”

 “So what happened? How’d you become friends?”

 “Well, we had this one match – a three-setter against two Serbs, the most impressive opponents that we’d met at the time. They were tight, you know? It was like they knew where the ball was going before we’d even hit it. We’d try to take them out wide to hit a centre return, throw them off, but they weren’t fooled. So Fitz and I were getting frustrated with each other. We’d only just managed to pull back the second set, were fighting through the first game of the third, and it was at break point on my serve. It went into this crazy rally. We were spectacular,” Jemma boasted, a proud grin breaking across her face. “We were hitting balls right on the baseline, edge of the alley, centre line, using every spot on the court. It was a 40-stroke rally. We moved around that court like magic, just instinctively knowing where the other one was the whole time. We’d never played quite like it before.”

 Skye was listening intently, nodding along, waiting in anticipation of a triumphant climax.

 “One of the Serbs hit the ball to my sideline and I managed to get a racket on it, got it back over the net, but I slipped and went down hard on my ankle.” Jemma winced a little at the memory, her tone dropping a little of its dramatic flair as she continued: “The return was a high ball, leaving Fitz an easy smash to finish it. He glanced over at me, though, took his eye off the ball, and ended up mishitting the smash right into the net. We lost the game and the match.”

 “He was worried about you?”

 “I thought it was so…” Jemma paused, smiling, as she searched for the right word. “… _stupid_! To lose like that when we’d played so beautifully. I couldn’t believe he’d cocked it up.”

 Skye laughed.

 “We ended up having this big, dramatic argument. He started yelling about my second serve getting us to break point in the first place, while I shouted back something about him taking the net out for a drink to apologize for hitting it so much.” Jemma covered her face with her hands, blushing. “The umpire had to give us a warning.”

 Skye raised an eyebrow.

 “Anyway,” Jemma continued, “that night I snuck out of my room, I don’t know what came over me, and went to his dorm.” She saw Skye’s eyes widen but quickly shook her head, keen to dispel any of Skye’s wild ideas. “No, nothing like that! I just wanted to talk to him. I felt bad.”

 “You went over to his dorm at night to ‘talk’?” Skepticism marked Skye’s tone, with air quotes of her own this time.

 “Yes.” Jemma rolled her eyes. “We argued a little more and Fitz was behaving… oddly…”

 Skye’s eyebrow went up again as, nearby, Fitz was performing some kind of bizarre ritual involving the unscrewing of several different bottles before setting them down in a very precise line on the other side of the court. He then began changing his racket grip at super speed.

 Jemma laughed and nodded briefly before shaking her head, clarifying, “No, it was… He was being very withholding, wouldn’t say a word, stopped fighting his side of the argument. He started to mutter things about dropping out of all the doubles, said he wanted to focus on his singles game. I thought it was ridiculous. We lose one game and he wants to give up. So I persuaded him to sneak out to one of the practice courts, 11 o’clock at night, and if he could beat me, I’d leave him alone.”

 “So, who won?”

 “No idea,” Jemma said, cheerfully. “Didn’t matter. We stopped keeping score. Sometime before the sun came up, we realized that combined we could be twice as good. We knew that, even though we hadn’t won, if we played every point like the one we lost that day, we’d be unbeatable next time. Last time we played that particular doubles team was the Hopman Cup final last year. We won in straight sets.”

 “Aww.”

 “Now, don’t tell him that I told you any of that,” Jemma insisted. She rolled her eyes with a grin. “Wouldn’t want his head getting any bigger than it already is.”


	2. Break Point

Jemma was wrapped up in her fluffy white dressing gown preparing her kit for the following day, with Fitz sat on her bed absently thumbing through a copy of Nylon that she had picked up days earlier. On TV in the background, highlights of Bobbi Morse’s championship win from earlier in the day were flashing up, the image of her iconic mockingbird logo inescapable as the footage showed her elegantly flying out wide to hit a perfect return.

 “There’s a band in here called Tennis,” Fitz announced with a laugh, flicking the page. “I hope they’re not too good. Interviewers like asking, ‘Favorite band?’ and it’d be very awkward to reply with that.”

 “I hope they’re not too _bad_. Don’t want them giving our sport a bad name,” Jemma reasoned, much to his amusement.

 Silence resumed as Fitz carried on reading, making contented hums every now and again while Jemma flitted around him. He was looking up at her intermittently, biting his lip and furrowing his brow.

 “Saw you talking to Skye earlier,” Fitz began, smooth as always.

 “Lovely girl!” Jemma enthused as she picked out her favorite tennis skort, perfect white with a black HEAD logo stitched neatly along the hem, laying it out beside a matching top. Though the choice had simply between this and another identical perfect white skort, she looked over her selection with a satisfied nod. “I think we’re gonna have a practice hit sometime.”

 “Am I invited?”

 She rolled her eyes. She knew where the conversation was headed and knew it spelled trouble.

 “Or is this just a girls thing? Are you gonna give the women’s doubles a whirl, see whether it strikes your fancy? Because I get it. Tweaked my ankle. You don’t want to be carrying my deadweight anymore.” There it was. The same old argument, rearing its ugly head again. 

 “Oh, Fitz!” she sighed, exasperated. “You don’t half jump to ridiculous conclusions.”

 “Well.”

 She rolled her eyes again, not dignifying his question with an answer. That only wound him up more, of course.

 “I was doing just fine on my own, you know? Back at the academy.” He tried to remain nonchalant, flipping pages of the magazine as he spoke, though far too quickly to take in any of the content. “I was _always_ a singles player. But you had to drag me into _this_. I didn’t want to play doubles. I scared everyone else off because I was perfectly fine-”

  “-on your own? _Please_. As if I forced you to follow me anywhere.”

  “You said, and I quote,” he snapped, derisively mimicking her: “‘Fitz, it’s the most perfect opportunity for us! We’d be fools to pass this one up!’”

 “I hate when you use that voice!” Jemma interrupted, pointing the pair of socks in her hand at him. “That’s not even how I sound! I merely pointed out that it might be productive to consolidate our skill sets.”

 “And now? You’ve got your serve locked down, your backhand… you don’t need me anymore, is that it?”

 “ _No_ ,” she replied, so desperately lost in his logic that she spoke almost in a laugh. “You’re the one with all this talk about me leaving. _You_.”

 “Maybe _I_ should leave,” he muttered, regret spilling out of him faster than words. It was stupid. But maybe the constant paranoia that she was waiting to ditch him was worse than the reality of it.

 “Oh, stop acting like playing with me hasn’t been the highlight of your entire pasty life!” She meant to say it lightly, in a misguided attempt to diffuse the tension, but it came out a little too sharp.

 “Pasty? Really? Well, when did you become so sun-kissed? Because I’m pretty sure every minute of every day, you’ve been on the court right beside me, applying just as much bloody sunscreen. At the academy, on the tour, this tournament! You’ve been beside me the whole damn time!”

 His words hung in the air and refused to drop. _The whole damn time_. There it was. The way he spat it out rang in both their ears. Jemma’s hands covered her face, exhaustion or emotion overwhelming her as she gave up on organizing her clothes. She fell back to sit on her bed beside him, inadvertently creasing the fresh kit beneath her. She sighed heavily as she looked over at him. They both knew what had gone unspoken: the separation that they refused to talk about, beside each other the whole damn time except for when they had come apart. It was the briefest of times and yet a chasm had formed of it. All they wanted was to close the gap but somehow it kept getting bigger, fights building out of nothing.

 Caught up in their rally, Fitz knew he had over-hit his retort and landed way outside the lines. He’d lost the point, momentum spinning out of his control. He was left with only love. But, of course, that meant nothing.

 “Jemma…” he started, quiet and nervous.

 “We’ve only got one more match. I know you’re anxious about your ankle after your injury but the Fitz I play with would hardly let a minor tweak get between him and the championship,” she said firmly, attempting to appeal to the competitor in him. “I don’t like this person, this _you_. The other guy, that’s who I want to play with: Fitz the fighter, the champion, my…” she took a deep breath, “my best friend. When you find him, let me know. But try and find him before the final because I’d really like to show him a Wimbledon trophy with our names on it. After that, you can... do what you like.”

 She hadn’t sounded angry, just sad.

 Fitz tried to swallow but couldn’t. It was as though he was fighting to swallow the words back down, unsay every last syllable, but his body wouldn’t let him. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, but it sounded so small. It sounded so weak.

 Jemma shrugged: a little forgiveness, a little dismissal. She looked away from him, not at anything in particular, at anything at all but him. Her eyes were darting around rapidly, head turned away from his view, and she blinked heavily, repeatedly. Then she got up and began reorganizing her kit. It was his signal. Fitz made his exit, steps silent as he passed her by and closed the hotel room door on his way out.

 As she heard the door click shut, Jemma exhaled tearfully.


	3. Double Fault

When she arrived at the locker room, Jemma wondered if he was going to show up at all. She trusted that it was too important, too big a stage on which to abandon her. The Wimbledon final? He wasn’t going to walk away from a potential grand slam title, _the_ grand slam title just because they’d had an argument. But the voice of doubt lingered in the back of her mind. She didn’t have a handle on what had happened between them. It had felt like more than an argument.

 She was used to fights. They enjoyed airing their frustrations at each other. It made things simple. There was no worrying about the unsaid. Fitz loved a good moan. He would moan about sunshine, long haul flights, being forced to adopt an athlete’s diet (“I could murder one of your prosciutto and Buffalo mozzarella sandwiches - with just a hint of pesto aioli!”). Whenever he felt affronted, Jemma would no doubt hear about it. There was usually no end to hearing about it.

 Lately, though, fights between them had shifted in tone. Feelings would get hurt. One of them would go too far, usually Fitz, and be left simmering in a mix of guilt and frustration. Last night, for example.

 Today was a new day, and while there remained a pretty big elephant in the room, they had a championship title to win and neither one of them was going to back down easily. Just as Jemma trusted he would, Fitz met her in the locker room. Not long after she had arrived, he tentatively walked in and set his bag down. Fitz had arrived early, in fact. A little less early than Jemma, but well in good time. He immediately took out a banana and started peeling it very precisely, letting the skin hang down in four equal segments. Jemma just watched him in silence.

 A short while later, though it certainly hadn’t felt that way to either of the players, the seemingly ubiquitous Mr Koenig arrived to lead them out to Centre Court one final time. “It’s time.”

 The walk felt like some peculiar combination of both the highlight of the young tennis players’ careers and a terrifying walk to their own execution. Their legs were jelly, though Fitz carried himself with the pretence of confidence, leading with his shoulders. Jemma saw through it. She tried to follow his example but her façade of self-assurance was even less convincing, her expression tense and focused. She tried to ignore the photographs adorning the walls all the way to the doors, of previous champions from all over the world, many of them heroes of hers, a few of them rivals. Every step of the walk to the court was a reminder of the prestige and enormity of the occasion.

 When they reached the doors to Centre Court, they stopped and awaited Koenig’s direction. Fitz adjusted his cap a little, a nervous tick that Jemma was quite used to. Their opponents - reigning champions - stood beside them, looking just as tense. It felt like an eternity waiting for those doors to open; the foursome stood there stewing in nerves, awkwardly not talking to each other. When Koenig led them out onto the court, it was almost a relief. They’d grown desperate to cut out the wait and start play.

 As soon as the crowd caught sight of them, there was an eruption of cheering, most of the support in Fitz and Simmons’ favor as it always was on home turf. They were minor stars among the tennis fans of Britain and the turnout was proof positive of that.

 The first set made for agonizing viewing for the British majority. Neither Fitz nor Simmons had been playing poorly; they had a high first serve percentage and had hit some impressive returns. But they were out of sync. Fitz’s favorite move, poaching the ball, was nowhere to be seen. He had crossed the centre line only a few times, reluctant to impose himself in the match and move around the court. They were rarely on the offensive, winning points only on serve or unforced errors. Each conciliatory post-point fist bump was a little less spirited than the one before. The set finished at 6-2 to the opposition. Then came the rain.

 From glorious sunshine to thunderstorms, the weather in London could change at the drop of a hat and the Wimbledon final made no exception. After multiple short, intermittent showers throughout the set, as the rain continued to pour during the set break, the umpire made the unchallenged decision to close the roof. With very little reaction from the rain-drenched crowd, play was suspended and the finalists all rushed back inside to wait on the roof. While their competitors walked side-by-side, outwardly reinforcing the sibling bond that controlled the scoreboard, Fitz and Simmons were on their own.

 Back in the locker room, they sat back-to-back on different benches. Minutes passed without a word. Fitz held a towel across his face, no longer even pretending to be drying himself off with it. He let it hang over him.

 “I don’t know why you’re always so scared I’m going to leave you,” she blurted out, tired and broken and desperate. Saying it was like ripping off a band-aid. There it was, the crux of it. Tears filled her eyes.

 “Because you _did_!” he replied, incredulous.

 “Madrid?! That was _one_ tournament. And I bombed! I was lucky to get through the first round. The only reason I even entered was because my partner was laid up at home,” she insisted firmly, standing up to close the gap between them, though still waiting for him to face her. The tears she had been fighting had begun to fall, her cheeks glistening. “We can’t _always_ play doubles, Fitz.”

 “You left! I needed help. I needed help just walking, I needed help with, umm… with lots of things. And someone to talk… _through_ , at least.” He turned to look at her, to ensure that his words would be heard. “You gave up on me.”

 “I did no such thing!”

 “You told me you were gonna go see your mum and your dad and then you went off to… play. I found out on the telly, Jemma. I would have come, I would have cheered you on at every match, like always, but you didn’t tell me. And because what? Because you think I’m useless?”

 “Of course I don’t. That’s not why I left.”

 “Well then, why?” Fitz stood up to look her in the eye.

 “Fitz… I was making you worse!” she replied, her voice strained. She rolled her eyes upwards, desperately trying to fend off the tears. “I could see that you were trying to force your recovery. Having me around, you were so agitated. I thought if I went away for a bit, it would take the pressure off.” There was a beat. “And you had Mack.”

 “Yeah, I had Mack,” he conceded. “I had Mack.” _And not you_. He wanted to tell her how much he’d missed her, how much he’d needed her, how lost he’d been without her. It didn’t feel right. It would have all been true but he wasn’t about to guilt her into staying with him. He realized, right then, that his desperate reliance on Jemma conflicted with her search for any way possible to assert some independence. It was funny how easy it was to accept once he’d realized the truth of it. Softly, he continued: “I don’t want to weigh you down or… hold you back. I want you to achieve everything that you want to…”

 “I’m not leaving you. That’s ridiculous,” Jemma said, dismissively. She walked closer to him, shaking her head with increasing fervor as she took each step, until there was no gap at all. “You’re my best friend in the world.”

 “Yeah, you’re more than that, Jemma. I couldn’t find the courage to tell you,” he admitted, unable to mask the emotion that caught in his throat.

 All colour left her face. She grabbed him, tears and snot dampening the shoulder of his t-shirt even more as she sobbed against him. She was squeezing the life out of him, as though the tighter she held him, the more he’d understand or the longer he’d let her stay.

 “It’s okay,” he said. And he meant it. It was an addictive kind of pain, so familiar and enduring that he had become unable to imagine life without it. And it was odd how easily pain spilled over into pleasure, and he found himself savoring a wave of feeling. So, it was okay. He was okay with it and that was all he knew.

 “No,” she sobbed, inadvertently wiping her nose on him.

 They were suddenly interrupted, Koenig asserting his presence in the doorway, reacting awkwardly to their embrace. “Mr Fitz, Miss Simmons. We’re ready to resume play.”

 “Are you ready?” Fitz whispered to her, wiping his face.

 Jemma collected herself, calming her unsteady breaths with a sigh. Her eyes moved slowly to his face, looking at him for the first time since she’d taken him in a hug. There was caution in her expression, as though she didn’t quite know what she was going to see when she looked at him. With a weak smile and a nod, she replied: “I think so.”


	4. Perfect Match

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this provides a satisfying ending for all of you who have followed this one. And please note, the Hawk-Eye I'm referencing is not Clint Barton but rather the technology used in tennis to determine whether a ball is in or out. I'm sorry if you were hoping for Clint Barton.

A weight had been lifted. Having finally, _finally_ , said the words that had hung in the back of his throat since the day he met Jemma Simmons, Fitz suddenly felt the full weight of the occasion. Any distraction that his personal turmoil had afforded him was gone.  He looked around Centre Court, at his mother nodding firmly at him from the players’ box, at the union jacks waving in the wind, the crowd a sea of red and blue and white. Then he looked at his partner.

 “Jemma. What do you say we give these people a match?” Fitz whispered, hand covering his mouth instinctively.

 She looked up at him. He was a whole new Fitz. He thought they could win and, looking into his eyes, she believed him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, quiet please,” the umpire requested. “Ready? …Play.”

 Jemma flashed Fitz an assured smile. “Let’s do this.”

By some small miracle, they broke serve in the first game back out on court. The seed was sewn. Momentum was shifting. Their opponents were looking rattled. A nervous double fault, an unforced error and impressive returns from both Fitz and Simmons saw the Brits clawing their way back into the match.

 “Fitz, Miss Simmons lead by one game to love; first set: Maximoff, Miss Maximoff.”

 They continued to battle back, holding their serve and their nerve to take the score to one set all. The score was even. The crowd was getting louder, much to their umpire’s dismay. “Quiet, please.”

 As Fitz celebrated another winning point, he couldn’t help but wave his arms, encouraging the cheers to get louder, his audience happily obliging him. “Come on!” he was shouting.

 The deciding set started steady. Fitz served first, setting up big chances for his partner and even throwing in an ace. If Fitz’s reactions to his own victories weren’t enthusiastic enough, his fist pumps for Jemma more than proved his investment. They happily grabbed each other’s hands after every point, win or lose, consoling each other for net catches as readily as they celebrated successful smashes.

 As Pietro Maximoff began his service game, it became clear that their opponents were struggling to find a corner the Brits couldn’t get to. The Maximoffs held serve, but only just. The Pietro game had vacillated between deuce and advantage, Fitz/Simmons and Maximoff/Maximoff taking turns for ten full minutes before the players were put out of their misery. It was one game all.

 Play remained on serve, with Fitz and Simmons’ holding comfortably through their service games while the Maximoffs battled against a break. The Brits were gaining confidence with every point, with Simmons throwing in crowd-pleasing trick shots – drop shots, overheads, backhand slices - as Fitz played some aggressive serve-and-volleys. Momentum was firmly in the hands of the Brits by four games all, and luck was on side too, with two Hawk-Eye calls in their favor handing them another hold. If they could just get a break of serve, the championship was theirs.

 The Brits’ impressive form continued into their fifth service game. Fitz opened with an ace; he followed that with an unreturned serve, before throwing in a spin serve to open up an opportunity for Simmons to poach and finish. Only at 40-love did the Maximoffs finally have a chance, and Wanda hit an impressive cross-court forehand to take it to 40-15. Hope didn’t last long for the opponents, however, as Simmons took advantage of a gap down the middle to finish the last point of the game. The crowd lapped it up, the closed roof acoustics adding to the atmosphere.

 It was 5-4 in the third set; Fitz and Simmons were just a break of serve away.

 Fitz prepared to receive for the first point of what they could only hope would be the final game of the match. He crouched a little, readying himself to run. Pietro threw his ball up for a high toss and delivered a fast serve that Fitz only just managed to get a racket on, hitting the ball back over the net for Wanda to return. Simmons hit a defensive lob, received on the baseline by Pietro, who attempted a smash. Simmons was quick to it though, using the speed that Pietro had put behind the ball to tap it over. Wanda ran up but came too late. “Love-15,” announced the umpire.

 “If he bounces the ball once, he’s going down the middle. Twice and it’s out wide,” Fitz whispered into Simmons ear, his back to the net. She nodded.

 Simmons watched Pietro bounce twice before the toss. She made the move out wide as soon as she heard the racket touch the ball, comfortably hitting a backhand return across the court. The ball never came back. Simmons reached out to high-five Fitz and commended him: “Brilliant deduction, Doctor Watson.”

 “I’ve always pictured you as Watson,” he replied, with a laugh.

 The next two points were long rallies, both expertly controlled by the Maximoffs. At 30 all, the game was still anybody’s. Pietro served up another rally. All four players were getting a workout, speeding around the court to fill up whatever space their partners weren’t covering. The Maximoffs began moving up towards the net, going offensive with an attacking volley, but Fitz saw the space at the back of the court and hit an overhead. It landed on the baseline. They watched the chalk fly up. Pietro called for Hawk-Eye but it was desperate. He knew as well as anyone: it was in.

 Break point, match point, championship point.

 Pietro placed his serve perfectly on the outside line of the service box but Jemma was there, sending it hurtling back and placing it with expert precision on the sideline of the alley.

 “Game, set, match: Fitz, Miss Simmons. Up two sets to one, 2-6, 6-4, 6-4.”

 It was over. They were Wimbledon champions. They had barely heard the umpire announce the score over the noise of the crowd. Fitz and Simmons both dropped to the floor, their legs unable to take the weight of what had just happened. _Game, set, match: Fitz, Miss Simmons_.

 After both taking a minute to let it sink in, lying in near identical poses on the grass with their faces covered, they both stood back up to observe the traditional post-match etiquette.

 Jemma put her hands on Fitz’s shoulders from behind him, squeezing affectionately before they graciously shook hands with their opponents across the net. They reached out to the umpire, who repeated the gesture, first with Simmons and then with Fitz, before Fitz’s hand fell back to his side and he turned back to his partner, taking her in a warm hug.

 “Today, love means I win,” Jemma whispered to him, beaming, perhaps just proud of her pun. It was a smile that outshone every bright smile he’d ever seen her give him before. It was blinding. She threw her arms around Fitz’s neck and marveled at him before pulling him into another hug, just laughing, stunned. Fitz had tears in his eyes, euphoria manifesting in every way imaginable, and was reassured to feel Jemma’s tears against his shoulder. He lifted her feet off the ground and clung to her, the embrace shutting off the rest of the world and the thousands of fans that were cheering for them.

 “We did it. Together,” he said, his lips moving against her as he buried his face in her neck. She just smiled even wider, if it was possible, and leaned her head to one side, resting against him.

 “I’m not going anywhere, Fitz.” Jemma paused. “Well, _I am_ ,” she corrected herself. “I’m going all over the world. But you’re coming with me. And about what you said… You’re my best friend, Fitz.” She paused, drawing a deep breath. He felt her chest rise against his. “But so much more. _So much more._ ” Her Sheffield accent was rich with warmth as she spoke. Jemma pulled her face away from him and waited for him to lift his head to look at her, truly look her in the eye.

 When he did at last look up, she wasn’t smiling. Her expression was serious, her eyes searching his for reassurance. Her hand moved across his cheek.

 And then it happened. Her lips on his. She kissed him so passionately that the crowd was forgotten. No matter how much noise those fans could make – and it was a lot – it couldn’t penetrate the vacuum of their kiss.

 When they came apart, they let the world in at last. She let out a big laugh, the tears on her cheeks catching the light, and looked at Fitz, shrugging with disbelief. The realization that they’d just shared their first kiss on the biggest possible stage was beginning to set in. “No take-backs?” he asked lightly.

 “No take-backs,” she reassured him, adding an enthusiastic shake of her head.

 Jemma stepped towards him again, blushing, and rested her head against his neck, hands flat against his back. It was easier to hide in one another. The court looked empty but for them, with the eyes of the largest crowd they’d ever had on them and the cheers from Henman Hill audible from where they were standing. Fitz looked over at their box, his mother proudly weeping as Fitz’s Davis Cup teammate Lance Hunter put his arm around her with Simmons’ family clapping beside them. Every one of their previous titles combined couldn’t compare to this moment.

 Fitz kept shaking his head, as though determined to wake himself up from the dream. None of it could possibly be real. He backed away from Jemma to compose himself, suddenly struck by the scale of it all. He covered his face as tears started to fall. She watched it overwhelm him, not even bothering to cover up her own tears, a proud grin forming as he looked back up at her, a question in his eyes. She shrugged and laughed.

 As soon as he managed to gain some semblance of composure, he closed the gap between them again and kissed her, a sweet peck before they fell into another hug. As they kissed, the crowd cheered louder and louder.

 By the time Fitz and Simmons were holding their trophies above their heads, there was no doubt that fans on Centre Court, and the audience all over the world, had been treated to the entertaining and eventful match that they had craved. And, of course, _so much more_.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm always incredibly grateful for comments and kudos, if you have any feedback to give. Thanks for reading.


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